• The Trussell Trust is the main charity supporting food banks in NI, and the rest of the UK.
  • Its latest figures indicate that 14,000 emergency food parcels were handed out to children from April-September last year.
  • That is a 90% increase compared with the same period in 2019.
  • However, while Trussell is the largest organisation operating food banks and reporting statistics, its figures do not include all charitable provision of food.

During an Assembly debate on emergency food parcels for children on 27 January, Alliance MLA Sian Mulholland said:

“I rise not out of duty but out of a profound sense of sadness and quite a lot of anger that, in 2025, children in Northern Ireland still rely on food banks to survive; that 62,000 children face hunger in Northern Ireland; that the number of emergency food parcels distributed to children has increased by 90% in the past five years; and that we continue to accept that as inevitable, with child poverty still not being treated as an outright priority by today’s Department for Communities or any previous one.”

This claim was repeated by several other members during the debate. Sinn Féin’s Colm Gildernew said:

“[We] have seen a huge rise in the number of people availing themselves of food banks, with a 143% increase in food bank usage over the past five years, including a 90% increase for children.”

The UUP’s Andy Allen said: 

“Today, we are confronted with the grim reality that, over the past five years, the number of emergency food parcels distributed by Trussell Trust food banks to children in Northern Ireland has risen by 90%.”

Sinn Féin’s Ciara Ferguson said: 

“It is no surprise that the Trussell Trust has reported that, in the past five years, usage of emergency food parcels for children has increased by 90%.”

Alliance’s Kate Nicholl said: 

“Figures from the Trussell Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation show that child poverty in Northern Ireland is at an alarmingly high level, with the number of emergency food parcels provided to children having increased by 90% over the past five years.”

A week after the debate, SDLP MLA Cara Hunter posted on social media that:

“Uptake of food banks by children in Northern Ireland has increased by 90%.”

The 90% figure also featured in the wording of the motion for the debate, which called for the Assembly to express “grave alarm that the number of emergency food parcels distributed by Trussell food banks to children in Northern Ireland increased by 90% during the past five years”.

Communities Minister Gordon Lyons mentioned “a 90% increase in usage [of food banks] over the past five years” although he did not specifically mention children. 

The question, however, is whether these claims are correct?

Some of the claims listed above say slightly different things – more on that later – but ultimately the evidence indicates that food bank usage by children in Northern Ireland has risen by 90% over the past five years.

Figures from the Trussell Trust state that 14,000 emergency food parcels were issued to children between April and September last year, an increase of 90% compared to the same period in 2019.

  • Sources

FactCheckNI contacted all of the MLAs who made some variation of the claim that food bank use among children has seen a 90% increase. At the time of writing, we have received several responses.

  • Kate Nicholl pointed us to page five of this Trussell Trust report.
  • Colm Gildernew sent us an excerpt from a Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network briefing paper which quoted the Trussell Trust figures.
  • Ciara Ferguson sent us a copy of a Trussell Trust memo for MLAs ahead of the debate, which used the same figures as the report sent by Ms Nicholl.
  • Cara Hunter referred us to news reports about Trussell Trust figures, as well as the organisation’s website.
  • Trussell Trust

The Trussell Trust is an “anti-poverty charity and community of food banks” which operates across the UK.

The organisation publishes statistics about emergency food distribution twice a year. Its latest six-monthly figures for the use of food banks ‘in the Trussell community’  in Northern Ireland cover the period from April to September last year.

That report states that:

“The latest five-year trend (with 2019 as the baseline year) shows a 95% increase for adults and a 90% increase for children in parcels provided April-September.”

Relevant data is shown in this table:

Figure 1 – source: Trussell Trust

There are some caveats to this. Not all food banks are necessarily part of the Trussell Trust network and data from those, or other models of emergency food provision, are not included in these figures. According to the latest Trussell Trust report:

“It is important to recognise that data from food banks in the Trussell community is just one part of the picture of need across Northern Ireland. There is a wide range of charitable food aid that will be supporting people that is not captured in this parcel data. There are also many people who are severely food insecure who do not receive support from food banks.”

However, the Trussell Trust remains the largest organiser of food banks in Northern Ireland, and a long-standing source of information about trends in food bank use in Northern Ireland, as well as the UK in general. If anyone knows of further supplementary information or data that is relevant to this fact check, or this issue at large, then please get in touch.

Based on all this, it is fair to say that evidence exists to support the claim that “the number of emergency food parcels distributed to children has increased by 90% in the past five years.”

  • The finicky bit

That doesn’t quite end the fact check. Although it provides relevant evidence, it is important to at least note that some of the MLAs made slightly different claims than the others.

Not all the MLAs caveated the 90% claim with the important detail that it just referred to emergency food parcels distributed by Trussell Trust food banks rather than being a figure for every organisation in Northern Ireland.

None of this really changes the rating, but it is good context to understand exactly where these figures come from, and precisely what they say.

  • Other context

According to the Trussell Trust’s latest report:

“Food banks in the Trussell community in Northern Ireland distributed almost 35,000 emergency food parcels between 1 April to 30 September 2024. This is a 13% decrease compared to the same period in 2023 when close to 40,000 parcels were distributed. However, levels of need remain significantly higher than just five years ago.

“This longer-term trend is stark. Despite the recent decrease, the number of parcels distributed in the first half of this financial year was almost double (+93%) than in the same period in 2019. The number of parcels distributed in this period remains significantly higher than any previous year apart from 2023. This is only the second time that food banks in the Trussell community in Northern Ireland have distributed over 14,000 parcels for children in the first six months of the year.”